Coolant passages & head gasket
 

As I removed my old (stock) head gaskets I notice that there are no cutouts for one of the forward coolant passages. My new Felpro gasket is the same way.
This just seems rather strange because there seems to be a matching passage in both my stock heads and the newTwisted Wedges.
And does anyone know why some of the other coolant ports have such a small hole in the gasket?

Also, does it matter if I use a 7/16-14 tap or do I have to find a thread chaser to clean up my head/block bolt holes? The tap I have seems to be a little tight and I dont want to cut anything strange into the threads. (Haven't run the tap down yet - just want to make sure)

Thanks,
Dan

That part of the passage is supposed to be blocked off. The holes in your block are 7/16-14 so it is allright to run the tap in the hole. You will just be cleaning the crap out of the holes. Wish I was in Salt Lake, Alta is calling me. I was out there for vacation at the begining of the month and am dying to do some more skiing.

Thanks for the info. Yes the snow is getting even better. You don't want to be here during the Olympics. It's gonna be a ******* zoo around here.

As far as the threads, I was a little concerned because the tap seemed tight.
So then I tested the tap on a new 7/16 nut. The nut wouldn't spin over the tap easily. I know it was on straight. I had to crank it through and got a few shavings out of it in the process. It started me thinking that maybe there are different classes of 7/16-14 threads. Didn't like the idea of possibly not getting all the shavings out of my block. Who knows where they might end up.

BTW I have new ARP bolts.

Dan

You want a 7/16-14 tap and it should have something like H3 on it. Any number bigger than a 3 is an over size tap. You shouldn't use it if it is an H5 or bigger.